The foundation stopped updating the list in 2017 stating that there is strong evidence that all laser printers use some form of tracking. The organization went on to suggest that there was a strong likelihood that printers who did not use yellow dots used a different system that was not yet identified.

A team of researchers from TU Dresden in Germany published a research paper that provides deeper knowledge of laser printer printout tracking methods. The researchers discovered a new tracking pattern, managed to decode information, and developed an algorithm to detect and extract data.

The researchers confirm the EFF's initial discover that color printers add "tiny and systematic yellow dots" to printouts. The information usually includes the serial number of the printer and the data of the printout.

The information can be read and encoded automatically using the right tools. The tracking data poses a risk to privacy as the information may be used to link the printout to a particular printer.

The German researchers found four tracking dot patterns used by laser printers. The research paper provides an analysis of the code and structure for each.

DEDA

The researchers released DEDA -- tracking Dots Extraction, Decoding and Anonymisation toolkit -- which is available for Linux.

You can install the tool using the command pip3 install deda. It supports different options:

DEDA is a new tool for Linux that researchers have created to read and decode the forensic information, and to anonymize information to protect against tracking.

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Martin Brinkmann

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Ghacks Technology News

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About Martin Brinkmann

Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand.You can follow Martin on Facebook, Twitter or Google+

And other evil-doers, like whistleblowers, political dissidents, and political organizers. After all, if you support *absolutely everything* your government, intelligence services, and law-enforcement agencies do, no matter what it is, you have nothing to fear from your work-product being easily identified.

All sarcasm aside, if I were a high-value target (a “good-guy” target, obviously), I don’t think I’d rely on DEDA alone to anonymize my printouts. Instead, I’d break into my worst political enemies’ houses and print stuff out from *their* computers on *their* printers. ;-)

No, this tool helps none of those. Here’s the flow: 1) print a doc 2) scan the doc at high res 3) run it through DEDA

now you have a PDF with all the tracking data removed. What are counterfeiters going to do with that PDF? Print it? Nope: the printer will just add tracking data back in. You can’t spend a pdf scan of money.

About gHacks

Ghacks is a technology news blog that was founded in 2005 by Martin Brinkmann. It has since then become one of the most popular tech news sites on the Internet with five authors and regular contributions from freelance writers.